An epidemic of alarm

by gilliansimpson'19

Statements of “that scared me” and “I’m never going to college now” echoed through the hallways this past week. The sophomore class was rightfully terrified after watching The Hunting Ground, a documentary about rape on college campuses, in their Wellness 2 classes. The hyper-realistic film delves into details about the dangers of college, especially for women. This addition to the curriculum was brought forth by seniors Kimberly Simpson, Nina Levine, Katie Martin, and Emily Pattinson for their CAS project.

According to Kimberly, the girls chose to show this film for their project because they were heavily impacted when they watched the documentary the first time and thought that it would be beneficial for others to see it as well. Their project is continuing in the following weeks via a “Only Yes Means Yes” poster that students will be able to sign during their lunch blocks, and a sexual awareness event in the Theater on February 8 at 7:00 pm. At this, Mariah Cahill, a YWCA Community Education Advocate, will be responding to questions that sophomores wrote down after seeing the movie.

The Hunting Ground’s strong impact on sophomores was evident as Aubrey Patrick revealed that the most surprising fact to her was that colleges did not do anything about the sexual assault epidemic despite having clear evidence of it. Both Sarah Mello and Rachel Desmond agreed that what angered them the most was when a male student in the film said “so just because she said no and we still have sex it was rape?”. They, along with many other students, vocalized how ignorant and predatory that kind of attitude is. Many other claims of “I’m never going to college again” or “I’m not going to go to any parties in college” revealed the true depth of the fear that was instilled in many female students. Emma Danes commented that, to her, the most surprising information was that “nothing gets done about it and the same person can do it over and over again”. Overall the seniors’ project had the desired influence as students really considered the problem.

Even though there was the general consensus of ‘rape is a problem that needs to be fixed’, not everyone could agree on how to go about that, and many others missed the point of the documentary altogether. At the end of the film, sophomores still had questions about what they, personally, could do with the information they had just learned. One student even said “It’s sad but I don’t really think that there’s anything that can be done to fix it”. The film provided the answer as at the end as it showed the website address SeeActStop.com with information on what people can do to get involved and help survivors.

During the S4 Wellness class, a student questioned “were there any consequences for the girl who claimed that Jameis Winston raped her? He technically didn’t do it because he wasn’t prosecuted so wasn’t she lying?”. His teacher, Mrs. Campbell-Kelley, responded that there was DNA evidence and a rape kit proving his guilt, and that the point of that segment was the college’s response to her claim and blatant denial of facts. She also pointed out that the survivor in that case was basically “ran out of town” and seen as a liar by her university, so there were indeed consequences for her even if she was telling the truth. That student’s inquiries were repeated by Mr. Salch to one of his classes. According to multiple sophomores in his class, Mr. Salch told them after the documentary that the Jameis Winston case was a ‘gray-area’ and that it has not been proven that he committed rape. These students reported that they were alarmed by his cavalier response to such a repulsive act that had been thoroughly proven by the film.

This same problematic attitude can be seen by questions students wrote down for the girls in charge of this project at BHS. Many inquired harmful ideas such as “was she drunk?”, “what percentage of girls lie about being raped?”, and “why do girls continue to go to fraternities if they know that rape happens there?”. To these questions, the only response is that drunkenness does not equal consent, victim blaming is not the solution, and rape has the same percentage of false reports as any other crime such as murder or kidnapping.

​Despite not everyone focusing on the more relevant parts of the documentary, most sophomores concurred that they thought The Hunting Ground’s message was an important and necessary topic to learn about. Yet even knowing now how alarmed it made them; Aubrey, Emma, Rachel, Sarah, and countless others all said that, given the chance again, they would still watch the film because it is an important topic to gain awareness of.